[Infographic] Privacy At Work: Know Your Rights

Pay and working conditions for employees today are vastly different to how their predecessors were treated.

This is down to major advances in workers’ rights, and means that many employees are no longer expected to work overtime without being paid for it or work in unsafe conditions for example.

Whilst these positive factors provide the modern worker with a much better pay and working conditions than they would have had to accept in previous generations, it should not be forgotten that employees have anything like complete freedom, and there is still work to be done.

As this guide Privacy at Work: Know your Rights illustrates, there are still plenty of scenarios and conditions that tend to favor employers.

There are quite rightly, many laws now that prohibit employers from asking you personal information such as your relationship status, your national origin or even your age, in an interview situation, although you will find that many won’t stop you from volunteering this insight into your personal status and lifestyle.

You may be surprised to discover that although your employer is restricted by employment laws as to what they ask you directly, many companies do attempt to monitor online activity and build a picture of your activities and behavior, through a number of different channels.

Many of us spend a lot of time online, including logging into social media sites and using emails at work, but considering that over 60% of firms are believed to monitor internet connections at work and nearly 80% admitted to monitoring employees through web browsing, email and other channels of communication, perhaps you should consider being more cautious about what you say and post online.

It is not just what you are saying and doing that they may be looking at, as employers can also use monitoring software to record your keystrokes and see how much time you spend away from your computer.

It is well worth taking a look at the privacy guide to see what your employer might be doing and what rights you have in relation to the information they are gathering about you.